Die Trying (Jack Reacher 2)

"I know," he said, quietly. "One of them is bent. I finally figured that out about half a second before they grabbed me up. "

"Where are they?" Reacher asked again.

"Up here somewhere," McGrath said. "We came in through the ravine together, a mile apart. "

"Which one is it?" Reacher asked.

McGrath shrugged.

"I don't know," he said. "Can't figure it out. I've been going over and over it. They both did good work. Milosevic found the dry cleaner. He brought the video in. Brogan did a lot of work tracing it all back here to Montana. He traced the truck. He liaised with Quantico. My gut says neither one is bent. "

"When was I ID'd?" Reacher asked.

"Thursday morning," McGrath said. "We had your complete history. "

Reacher nodded.

"He called it in right away," he said. "These people suddenly knew who I was, Thursday morning. "

McGrath shrugged again.

"They were both there at the time," he said. "We were all down at Peterson. "

"Did you get Holly's fax?" Reacher asked.

"What fax?" McGrath said. "When?"

"This morning," Reacher said. "Early, maybe ten to five? She faxed you a warning. "

"We're intercepting their line," McGrath said. "In a truck, down the road here. But ten to five, I was in bed. "

"So who was minding the store?" Reacher asked.

McGrath nodded.

"Milosevic and Brogan," he said, sourly. "The two of them. Ten to five this morning, they'd just gone on duty. Whichever one of them it is must have gotten the fax and concealed it. But which one, I just don't know. "

Reacher nodded back.

"We could figure it out," he said. "Or we could just wait and see. One of them will be walking around best of friends and the other will be in handcuffs, or dead. We'll be able to tell the difference. "

McGrath nodded, sourly.

"I can't wait," he said.

Then Reacher stiffened and pulled him ten yards farther into the woods. He had heard the patrol coming back through the trees.

INSIDE THE COURTROOM. Borken had heard the three shots. He was sitting in the judge's chair, and he heard them clearly. They went: crack crack. . . crack and repeated a dozen times as each of the distant slopes cannoned the echo back toward him. He sent a runner back to the Bastion. A mile there, a mile back on the winding path through the woods. Twenty minutes wasted, and then the runner got back panting with the news. Three corpses, four cut ropes.

"Reacher," Borken said. "I should have wasted him at the beginning. "

Milosevic nodded in agreement.

"I want him kept away from me," Milosevic said. "I heard the autopsy report on your friend Peter Bell. I just want my money and safe passage out of here, OK?"

Borken nodded. Then he laughed. A sharp, nervous laugh that was part excitement, part tension. He stood up and walked out from behind the bench. Laughed and grinned and slapped Milosevic on the shoulder.

HOLLY JOHNSON KNEW no more than most people do about dynamite. She couldn't remember its exact chemical composition. She knew ammonium nitrate and nitrocellulose were in there somewhere. She wondered about nitroglycerin. Was that mixed in too? Or was that some other kind of explosive? Either way, she figured dynamite was some kind of a sticky fluid, soaked into a porous material and molded into sticks. Heavy sticks, quite dense. If her walls were packed with heavy dense sticks, they would absorb a lot of sound. Like a soundproofing layer in a city apartment. Which meant the shots she'd heard had been reasonably close.

She'd heard: crack crack. . . crack. But she didn't know who was shooting at who, or why. They weren't handgun shots. She knew the flat bark of a handgun from her time at Quantico. These were shots from a long gun. Not the heavy thump of the big Barretts from the rifle range. A lighter weapon than that. Somebody firing a medium-caliber rifle three times. Or three people firing once, in a ragged volley. But whichever it was, something was happening. And she had to be ready.

GARBER HEARD THE shots, too. Crack crack. . . crack, maybe a thousand yards northwest of him, maybe twelve hundred. Then a dozen spaced echoes coming back from the mountainsides. He was in no doubt about what they represented. An M-16, firing singles, the first pair in a tight group of two which the military called a double tap. The sound of a competent shooter. The idea was to get the second round off before the first shell case hit the ground. Then a third target, or maybe an insurance shot into the second. An unmistakable rhythm. Like a signature. The audible signature of somebody with hundreds of hours of weapons training behind him. Garber nodded to himself and moved forward through the trees.

"IT MUST BE Brogan," Reacher whispered.

McGrath looked surprised.

"Why Brogan?" he asked.

They were squatted down, backs to adjacent trunks, thirty yards into the woods, invisible. The search patrol had tracked back and missed them again. McGrath had given Reacher the whole story. He had rattled through the important parts of the investigation, one professional to another, in a sort of insider's shorthand. Reacher had asked sharp questions and McGrath had given short answers.

"Time and distance," Reacher said. "That was crucial. Think about it from their point of view. They put us in the truck, and they raced off straight to Montana. What's that? Maybe seventeen hundred miles? Eighteen hundred?"

"Probably," McGrath allowed.

"And Brogan's a smart guy," Reacher said. "And he knows you're a smart guy. He knows you're smart enough to know that he's smart enough. So he can't dead-end the whole thing. But what he can do is keep you all far enough behind the action to stop you being a problem. And that's what he did. He managed the flow of information. The communication had to be two-way, right? So Monday, he knew they'd rented a truck. But right through Wednesday, he was still focusing you on stolen trucks, right? He wasted a lot of time with that Arizona thing. Then he finally makes the big breakthrough with the rental firm and the stuff with the mud, and he looks like the big hero, but in reality what he's done is keep you way behind the chase. He's given them all the time they need to get us here. "

"But he still got us here, right?" McGrath said. "A ways behind them, OK, but he brought us right here all the same. "

"No loss to him," Reacher said. "Borken was just itching to tell you where she was, soon as she was safely here, right? The destination was never going to be a secret, was it? That was the whole point. She was a deterrent to stop you attacking. No point in that, without telling you exactly where she was. "

McGrath grunted. Thinking about it. Unconvinced.

"They bribed him," Reacher said. "You better believe

it. They've got a big war chest, McGrath. Twenty million dollars, stolen bearer bonds. "

"The armored car robbery?" McGrath asked. "Northern California somewhere? They did that?"

"They're boasting about it," Reacher said.

McGrath ran it through his head. Went pale. Reacher saw it and nodded.

"Right," he said. "Let me make a guess: Brogan was never short of money, was he? Never groused about the salary, did he?"

"Shit," McGrath said. "Two alimony checks every month, girlfriend, silk jackets, and I never even thought twice about it. I was just so grateful he wasn't one of the moaners. "

"He's collecting his next payment right now," Reacher said. "And Milosevic is dead or locked up somewhere. "

McGrath nodded slowly.

"And Brogan worked out of California," he said. "Before he came to me. Shit, I never thought twice. A buck gets ten he was the exact agent who went after Borken. He said Sacramento couldn't make it stick. Said the files were unclear as to why not. Why not is because Borken was handing him bucketfuls of dollars to make sure it didn't stick. And the bastard was taking them. "

Reacher nodded. Said nothing.

"Shit," McGrath said again. "Shit, shit, shit. My fault. "

Still Reacher said nothing. More tactful just to keep quiet. He understood McGrath's feelings. Understood his position. He had been in the same position himself, time to time in the past. He had felt the knife slip in, right between the shoulder blades.

"I'll deal with Brogan later," McGrath said finally. "After we go get Holly. She mention me at all? She realize I'd come get her? She mention that?"

Reacher nodded.

"She told me she trusted her people," he said.